Microsoft Office has a lot of settings, but what it assigns by default might not be the best choice for you. We’ll show you key default Office settings that you should customize to save time and be more efficient.

If you think there’s something we’ve missed from this list, please let us know in the comments below.

Universal

Some options are available across all (or the majority of) Office programs.

1. Customize the Ribbon

The ribbon is the bar that appears at the top and contains shortcuts and commands for the most common tasks. To customize it, go to File > Options > Customize Ribbon. On the left you will see all available commands, while the right shows your current configuration.

Click an item on the left and then click Add >> to move it to the right. You can click the plus signs to expand the categories and get further customization on what is included.

2. Save Location

If you usually save your files in the same location, you should adjust the default file path. To do this, go to File > Options > Save and look for the Save documents section.

First, tick Save to Computer by default. Next, on Default local file location click Browse… and navigate to the path you desire. Then click OK twice.

Excel

3. Number of Worksheets

Past versions of Excel always had three blank worksheets available by default when creating a new spreadsheet. This was designed to show people that the feature of multiple worksheets14 Tips to Save Time in Microsoft Excel14 Tips to Save Time in Microsoft ExcelIf Microsoft Excel has consumed a lot of your time in the past, let us show you how to get some of it back. These simple tips are easy to remember.Read More existed. Three was settled on as a nice amount that wouldn’t burden the user to delete the extraneous worksheets if they didn’t need them.

Times have changed and the majority of Excel users are well aware of this feature. As such, modern versions only open with one worksheet by default. Changing this is easy. In Excel, go to File > Options. On the General tab, beneath When creating new workbooks, you can input a value in Include this many sheets.

To have text wrapping enabled by default, first load a new spreadsheet and go to the Home tab on the ribbon and within the Styles group right-click Normal. Click Modify… and then Format… Switch to the Alignment tab, tick Wrap text, and click OK twice.

For this we need to know your Excel startup folder. If you don’t know it, keep Excel open and press Alt + F11 to open the VBA editor. Then press Ctrl + G, input ? application.StartupPath and press Enter. The folder path will appear beneath the command.

Go to File > Save As, name the file book and on the Save as type dropdown select Excel Template. Now Browse to the folder path from the previous step and Save the template here. All new spreadsheets you open will now use this template.

The final black slide is enabled by default, but you can turn it off for all presentations. Go to File > Options and click Advanced on the left. Scroll down to the Slide Show section and untick End with black slide.

Click OK to save your changes.

6. Viewing Method

When you open a PowerPoint file it will default to the view that the file was saved in. For example, this could affect whether the thumbnails or notes sections appear when you load the file. You can override this so that PowerPoint automatically applies your view settings.

To change this, go to File > Options and select Advanced from the left. Scroll down to the Display section, use the dropdown on the Open all documents using this view row.

Go to the Home tab on the ribbon and, within the Font group, click the downward arrow. This will open a new window where you can select which font you want, along with its various components like style and size. When ready, click Set As Default and select All documents based on the normal template?, then click OK.

8. Disable Paste Options

When you paste something into Word it’ll automatically bring up a Paste Options box that lets you choose the formatting. You can dismiss this quickly by pressing Esc, but if you don’t ever need it then you can turn it off completely.

To disable the Paste Options box, go to File > Options and select Advanced on the left. Scroll to the Cut, copy, and paste section and untick the Show Paste Options button when content is pasted. Click OK.

Don’t Settle for Default

You can customize so much in Office — don’t settle for the default! Even though changing your font or text wrap options might seem like a minor thing, the time saved of no longer having to constantly adjust them will add up.

Nice article, thanks! One customized Office setting I've been searching for for ages is the following:
Whenever I create a bulleted list in a Word document (or in an Outlook message, for that matter), the list gets bullet points that are indented by half an inch. I hate this (for purely aesthetic reasons, though). Instead, I would love each list item to have a dash in the front ("-") without indentation.
I tried tinkering with any Outlook settings I could get a hold of, but to no avail. Any idea how to change the standard bulleted list settings?

thanks for your reply. What I meant was changing the default setting:
I can of course manually change each bullet point list that I create; instead I would like to save my default list settings for future use. Unfortunately, changing the default bullet point settings does not seem to be possible.

Joe started writing about technology when he was far too young and hasn't stopped. He spends most of his time obsessing over computer software and hardware, and loves talking about himself in third person. Ask me about Loom.